John Cabat-Zin, not so much but with the principles and practise of meditation some experience, yes.

It is a real pity this aspect of training in the martial arts has largely disappeared. Training the mind is fundamental, after all that is where our actions come from. Based on good morals, kindness, patience, seeing things clearly, calmness, a martial art can truly thrive as a mind and body unity capable of great benefits to ourselves and those around us.

With the mind aspect neglected or misused MA can becaome something quite awful, or at best just a sport or exercise.

I have no direct personal experience with him, but I have read his books "Full Catastrophe Living" and "Wherever You Go, There You Are". Zinn has been pretty instrumental in the recent 'medical meditation' movement, and as such he is able to put mindfulness meditation into an easily understood language for Westerners. As well, he draws upon cognitive science to explain how the brain changes due to meditation. The meditation comes from the Buddhist tradition, but is non-sectarian, and not really 'religious practice' in any way.

As for your past skepticism, I think as far as mindfulness meditation is concerned it's pretty hard to deny the positive benefits in light of recent research. The works by Zinn will help explain all that better than I can.

I will say that for me mindfulness meditation has helped immensely. On the m.a. side of things, it has certainly helped me focus, have less tension in my body (so I'm more fluid than I was before), as well as having MUCH better breath control (and with that more stamina). On the non-m.a. side of things, it has helped me quit smoking, improve my focus for school and life in general and generally be a calmer person. Sometimes I practice for an hour or two a day, but usual it's only ten minutes in the morning and 5 or 10 before bed.

--Chris

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"Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought."--Basho

Another aspect of mindfulness that most of us know about (apologies if I patronise) is full concentration on each technique, tenseness and relaxation in the ody during a movement, full focus on the sensations of a movement, direction of energies, etc. Especially slowing things right down can be a great revealer of technique and a great teacher of correct technique and movement. All mindfulness of the body.

If you are constantly training hard style martial arts and not learning to relax down then you are going to be unbalanced, depending on how aggressively you train and your nature you will find that it affects everything in your life.

Your outer world is a direct reflection of your inner world, it seems silly to neglect the most powerful part of yourself.

Not only does the right kind of meditation benefit everything you do, it also allows your fighting skill to develop, you will develop sensitivities to your opponents energy, become faster, open up your intuition and your already existing psychic perceptions.

Most people see one topic like this with the world psychic and immediately shut off to it, their skepticism is not about the psychic/chi/whatever else it is about themselves.

If you actually take the time to "be" without any interruption from your conscious mind or outside influence or preconceived notions then you will most likely realize that. And if you continue you will realize yourself.

Hard style training in my eyes is yang training, yang energy repels, you will be repelling to everything you deserve in life if you can't balance yourself. Yin energy attracts it feels good.

When you are attracting you can't help but feel good and you find it easy to control yourself and be sensitive to energy instead of being so dulled from having too much yang energy.

Mindfulness in a way is sensitivity to what is around you, develop that don't neglect it.

IF you are interested in a very unique, powerful and scientific approach to meditation and energy cultivation send me a pm.

You will learn to develop your actual nerve fibers which will make you so much more sensitive to energy, along with that you cultivate chi energy in the same way that subatomic particles flow. You will progress at a much faster rate and your results will make you feel great

BTW I do not teach it, I have had some experience with it though and my life has never been the same.

Hello, I posted the following short story.. it is all true... I have been studying, making and practicing with swords, including my current, dream inspired, self developed style suited, sword.

I have been a practitioner of the martial arts for fifty years. I have been a philosopher for the same amount of time... If that post that appeared was by one of your moderators, he knows neither spirit nor sword..

The story.. and message...

So... the power of positive thought.. and intent... an interesting subject for sure...

I had an interesting thing happen on Saturday morning... I killed something.. by intent alone it seems... It was wrong of me, and it wasn't a positive thing,.. except to me.. for me it was perfection being manifest.. pure intent and will bringing into reality a perfection of man and blade. To me that is a good thing haha.

What happened was I was standing in the early morning sun doing my Akaido/tai-chi with a sword sort of thing, and had just drawn the blade from it's sheath and swung it to the right in what would have been a deadly cut, and was about to take a step forward to perform the customary coup de grace, when I noticed a tiny midge thing hovering in the still air about an arms length from me. Because it was close to me, inside my vulnerable range, I took offence at it and decided it would die for it's intrusion.. which was wrong of me... but instead of stepping forward I took a step backwards and swung with the one hand down and to the left in what I knew was a good aim. As I stopped the blade at knee height, I saw the tiny insect that had a moment before been a living thing, shimmering in the sunlight, pulsing forwards and back drawn by it's own will and intent, now reduced to a drab speck falling silently. It was dead, and it was as far as I can tell intact. When I cut at it, it hadn't moved off it's spot, either sideways or in line with the swords travel. It didn't flutter like something that had a wing cut off. I wasn't in two pieces. I hadn't touched it with the tip of the sword.. I doubt, though I was assuring my sons that it is the case, that I could have managed to behead it.. It was dead though.. I still feel a little bad about that. I am still trying to come to term with the reality of having killed it without sign of it having been hit at all.. One moment it was hovering in the air, then next it was slowly sinking as still and as inert as a speck of dust... I know it is intent that allows me to hit things too tiny for my eye to focus on, I do that often. I know that the intent was there to cut and kill the midge. I know my aim was true, and that it should have been hit, and either cut in two, or knocked off it's place a little... yet it was neither, and the mystery and wonder remains...

To me, the lesson to be learnt from the little insect, is as great as if I'd killed a man.. there is no difference to me. I already knew that intent is what wins fights. I already knew that a cut from a katana is instant death and more surprise than pain. I knew that the moving blade is no more responsible for the death than the through behind it.. And it was all confirmed in that moment of zen perfection... The whole nature of life and death spelled out in a sublime moment of consciousness...

The funny thing was, I'd been aware that there were two little finches making love in a bush near me, flitting in and out of the bush close enough to get hit. Now there is a story and movie about a great japanese swordsman that killed a swallow one day when he was having an argument with his girlfriend, and it's often thought the mention of the killing is a demonstration of his expertise with the sword.. which is not the point at all. Any swordsman knows that a swallow attacking you would be an easy target. The point in the story was that he allowed his anger get the better of him. So I was doing my thing and reflecting on the birds, and the relevance of the swallow killing in the story, just before I myself committed the same folly of taking offence unnecessarily and killing something...

I'm sure there is a lesson there too.. but I'll leave that to the midge to figure out..

I didn't really get angry. I just did it because I could.. which is even worse..

The important thing here perhaps being.. positive thinking is always the good way to be, and it does bring rewards.. but as I keep saying, it's our intent that needs keeping pure. We use our will to carry out our intent, and our intent all to often gets sidetracked by the details.. we loose sight of what we wanted to achieve. If we decide we want to balance a stick on our finger, and that becomes our intent, then we will run around keeping the stick from falling off.. and we will call that balancing the stick... If our intent is to have the stick stand on our finger as obedient as our own hand.. then we have no need to run about or even move..

The same principle applies to choosing where to use our positive thought.. positive thought is good.. as long as the intent is good too. Positive thinking alone can be misguided and all that positive energy becomes us using our greatest gift, our potential for creation.. to our detriment.